


Dead Thing

by alaraksis



Category: Destiny (Video Games)
Genre: F/F, OCs - Freeform, Oneshot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-10
Updated: 2019-10-10
Packaged: 2020-12-07 19:03:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,499
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20980844
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alaraksis/pseuds/alaraksis
Summary: ok I rewrote this so hopefully it’s better but here’s a one shot of my ocs meetings





	Dead Thing

**Author's Note:**

> Alaraksis has several gay panics and Wraith is a disaster
> 
> also I don’t proof read and i don’t correct small errors I just slam my head into the keyboard and auto corrects decides it will screw me over. seriously, it was correct until AC was like ‘wow I literally don’t respect you at all’ and changed it to be wrong

“Do you think this place has a name?”

The other Dregs glance back at her. Most roll their eyes and turn away, though some stare at each other, tittering, mandibles spread wide with their amusement.

“Silly question. It doesn’t matter,” the Vandal overseeing their excursion, Tykils, grinds out, annoyance obvious in his tone. Alaraksis ducks her head, hurriedly returning to the pile of scrap she has been digging through for what has felt like cycles. A silly question indeed, but not her first. Whenever her Captain sends their troupe out of their lair to scavenge, she can’t help but burst with questions. Some she restrains, keeps to herself to ponder over later. Others stray from her tongue, loose as the ether in her tank. 

She knows they are not questions she should have, let alone ask, yet sometimes she cannot help herself. 

Alaraksis rests for a moment, balancing her palms on the grimy sash that barely covers her waist. The air is crisp, cold. It always is. She wonders what it would taste like, inhaled not through a filter, but taken into her lungs. Her gaze wanders over the snow capped hills, the dilapidated buildings silhouetted in the setting sun. She wonders about the people who lived in these ruins, wondering about who they were, and what they might think about a being so strange and alien to them sifting through their garbage.

That makes her laugh.

“What were these buildings for?” She muses aloud, only realizing her mistake when the dregs chatting quietly around her immediately go silent.

Tykils clicks at her disapprovingly, and she ducks her head. She waits for a disciplinary strike, expecting a sharp blow to her head. Instead, Tykils bends next to her. She timidly meets his gaze, which bites harsher than the wind nipping at her exposed carapace.

“If you are so easily distracted by those structures, perhaps you should go scavenge there.”

Alaraksis feels a chill run up her spine. 

“Alone?”

He tilts his head. Those horrible, cold eyes bore into her skull. 

“Are you questioning my orders?”

“No,” she answers quickly, but anxiety is roiling inside her. She nervously glances toward the building he gestures to. It doesn’t appear to be that large. It has a few broken windows on one side, and a half-caved in roof. Anything could lurk within.

In the back of her head, she hears the warnings issued every time they embark on an assignment. 

Never split the group. Do not wander off alone.

But there is no authority here higher than Tykils, and his cruel gaze is unwavering. He has never liked her. Her questions have always rankled and irritated, and it appears that he has reached his limit.

She swallows a heavy gulp of ether, desperately trying to find comfort in its familiarity. 

There is none to be found.

Shakily, Alaraksis clambers to her feet. The other dregs are staring; she can feel their gazes burning into her back. She bites back a whimper, straightens her stance, and begins to walk with a confidence she has to force with a clenched jaw and curled fists.

The entrance is only about a hundred feet from her group, but by the time she reaches the door, she feels like she’s walked an endless expanse. Her teeth clatter together as she releases her jaw, and she can feel warm blood dripping steadily from where her talons dug into the softer area of her hands. 

The door squeaks on its hinges, nearly sending Alaraksis scrambling backwards for cover. Instead of listening to every instinct screaming at her to turn, to run, to simply take the punishment and return to the safety of her fellow Dregs, something fiercer in her pushes her forward. 

The entryway is littered with debris, rock and rubble that threaten to trip her as she cautiously makes her way inside. She wonders if her heartbeat is actually echoing through the room or if it is simply roaring loudly in her ears. 

There’s a decent sized pile of assorted junk and trash close to an open hallway, and she decides it’s as good as any place to start. Most of it is junk, unusable or unsalvageable. Her frustration laces itself in her frantic movements as she continues to dig, and still finds nothing. 

She snorts angrily, throwing yet another lost cause over her head. It lands on a counter behind her and clangs to the ground. To her horror, she hears something below her. Something that screeches, something that sounds extremely dangerous. She falls on her back as she fearfully scuttles away from the pile.

It happens while she’s anxiously getting to her feet. Whatever is below her screams again, and something answers. She hears a round of bullets echo from the descending stairway to her left she hadn’t noticed, and then a familiar noise freezes the ether in her throat. Something she’s only ever heard once, when her former Captain was killed.

The sound of a bow drawn, one she knows is racing through the air in a violet streak, even as she is rooted to the spot, mind racing with disbelief. Dread has its hooks in her, and it’s all she can do to try not to hyperventilate. 

“Forget this. They can dock my other arms, no pile of junk is worth dying for.” 

She launches herself at the door, desperate and pleading with whatever lost Eliksni deity might be listening.

They are not. 

A loud, echoing boom rattles the foundations of the building, and Alaraksis feels the hope flickering in her chest die with the resounding rumble that sends rubble collapsing in front of her only exit. She tumbles backwards yet again, hitting the wall and collapsing into a heap. Lights flash behind her eyes as she blinks and groans. There’s only a moment to reorient herself before she’s panicking, checking her breather for damage. 

There’s a minuscule crack in the lining, but her ether tank is undisturbed. She knows now is not the time for relief, not with what she is certain is below her.

She knows what the dead things are, and she could not possibly be in a worse situation. She has heard their beautiful, terrible light in all its blinding forms. There is a burn across her side from where a molten bullet streaked past her, disintegrating the poor dreg behind her. 

That whatever dead thing is here with her does not utilize burning solar light is cold comfort.

She pushes off the counter, hobbling to the middle of the room. The stairs have also collapsed, not that she would’ve gone down in the first place. The dead thing can have the basement; she wants an exit. 

Her weight and paltry strength is nothing to the rubble that block the most obvious exit. She hisses, straining against it for a few moments more before giving up. The next thing she looks for are windows, but it seems fate has it in for her, because she can find none in the room she’s currently in. 

She curses under her breath, resigned to wandering the halls, desperately clawing her way out while the dead thing undoubtedly tries to do the same thing, when she hears another noise. It is a quiet groaning, and before she can figure out where it’s coming from, the floor beneath her feet falls inward, and takes her with.

She is falling for only a moment before she slams onto her back for the second time, and she gasps through the cloying ether that floods her mouth, and she claws at the tank to make sure it hasn’t been dented. Once again, it manages to escape unscathed, and she heaves a relieved sigh.

“Oh. Hey.”

Alaraksis leaps to her feet, yowling like a cat dunked in water. She reels away from the voice, clawed feet scrabbling at the concrete.

The dead thing lies trapped beneath a ton of rubble, with only its arms and upper half of its chest free. It isn’t wearing a helmet, and it stares at her with unearthly eyes. She feels trapped by their gaze, the deep, haunting purple winding and writhing its way into the cracks in her mind.

She is terrified. She is enthralled. She is disgusted.

Perhaps most dangerous of all, she is curious.

The dead thing makes no move to escape. It seems...comfortable? Staring at her from across the room, teeth bared. That makes her uneasy, and she bares her teeth back, flaring her mandibles and puffing up as best she can.

The dead thing laughs.

“Woah, hey. I’m not going to hurt you. Well I mean, it’s not exactly like I can right now. Even if I wanted to.” 

It gestures to its current predicament, and it takes Alaraksis a moment to realize that the most jarring thing about this entire situation is she can understand this dead thing.

“How...how am I...understanding you?” She asks, slowly and quietly, hoping not to provoke an undesirable reaction. The dead things strange mouth widens, and it claps its hands together, startling Alaraksis.

“That’s because of Starlight! Say hi, Starlight.”

Nothing happens. The dead thing frowns, then appears to have a fast, quiet conversation with something Alaraksis can’t see.

If it were possible to die from a cocktail of fear, confusion, and awe, Alaraksis thinks her chest would’ve exploded by now.

The dead thing pouts. 

“Sorry, he’s being cagey. And RUDE.”

There’s an indignant noise somewhere close, and Alaraksis can scarcely believe it when an invisible voice starts to berate the dead thing.

“I’m being rude? To an enemy of the city? So sorry, did you want to also introduce me to that wizard we were fighting? Oh right, you thought that shooting a rocket off indoors was a good idea and you obliterated it! Too bad we can’t invite it to the ship for a fucking tea party! Hell, why stop at a wizard? Why don’t we go to the moon, invite Crota over for finger food and oolong!” 

The voice shrieks, and the dead thing cringes away sheepishly. Whatever this thing is, Alaraksis can feel its seething fury.

She decides she is more afraid of the voice than the dead thing.

There’s an awkward silence when it stops yelling, and the dead thing clears its throat.

“Sorry about that. Starlight usually isn’t so high strung. He can be kind of funny, when he’s not dealing with me being an idiot.”

“HIGH STRUNG?”

The dead thing bats at the air next to her head, and Alaraksis feels a static burst sting her arm. She hisses, drawing inward. The dead thing cranes its head, and frowns.

“Shit, I’m sorry about that.”

There’s another long silence, during which Alaraksis nurses her stung arm. Her apprehension wars with her curiosity when the dead thing speaks up again. 

“Here I am, being just as rude. Most folks call me Wraith, do you have a name?”

She considers not answering it. She considers climbing atop the rubble its trapped under and out of the basement, and never looking back. She considers drawing her knife and driving it into its helpless skull. 

She takes a steadying breath.

“...Alaraksis.”

“Nice to meet you, Alaraksis. So! Not to like, burden you are anything but, you wouldn’t happen to be able to help a girl out, would you?”

It-she waggles her eyebrows, and gestures to a metal bar not far from her head.

“If you could maybe wedge that under here, I could crawl out. Starlight won’t transmat me because he’s feeling petty-“ the voice doesn’t speak up, but it’s annoyance is palpable “-so I’m pretty much at your mercy here.”

Alaraksis pads over to the bar, laying her hands on the cold metal. She can see her partial reflection, and the reality of the situation finally seems to dawn on her. This is an enemy. An enemy that has killed thousands of Eliksni, that stole the Traveler from them, that flaunts their glory in the face of those they call fallen. Her grip on the bar tightens, and she glances back at the dead thing.

She has a soft, pale face, with stark white strands that sprout from the top of her head and fan out on the ground she lays on. Her eerie gaze is devoid of warmth, but her mouth has a kindly crinkle and it is strange and wonderful. A knot tightens in Alaraksis’s stomach. This is treason. This is heretical. She could be killed for this. It would be easy to leave the dead thing here, easy to tell her group there was nothing to be found in this disastrous building, to forget about this entire thing.

She wedges the bar between the rubble and the ground and prays she lives to regret it. 

The dead thing heaves with her, shuffling and squirming until she’s free of the weight and rolling to her feet. Alaraksis watches with wary interest as the dead thing-Wraith, she reminds herself-stretches her arms, flexes her legs, and rolls her neck. 

She grins broadly at Alaraksis, who attempts feebly to reciprocate. 

“Thanks for that. Let me return the favor, eh?”

With no warning, Alaraksis finds herself bundled in Wraith’s arms. There’s no time to react as Wraith leaps, higher than anything Alaraksis has ever seen before. They linger a moment in the air, before something seems to propel them higher, and they are standing together at the edge of the hole. 

Alaraksis is trembling, and she finds she’s not entirely sure why. Wraith notices, and Alaraksis feels a hand on her shoulder. Every muscle in her body locks as her eyes follow the incline of her arm to the dip of her shoulder, trailing up and along her face. The knot in her stomach is back and twisting as that soft face gazes at her with more tenderness than she can process.

“Sorry. I should’ve given you a heads up, but I feel like showing is easier than explaining.”

“It’s okay,” she offers weakly, feeling like her knees might give out at any moment. It’s a perfect moment, just the two of them, enemies chosen for each other, standing side-by-side. Alaraksis fumbles for a reason why it makes her feel so light.

And then reality crashes in.

The weight of what she’s done, the consequences of her actions buckle her knees, and she crumples. Wraith follows her down with a concerned noise, but tilts her head when Alaraksis starts to chitter, and then devolve into full on laughter.

“I am-“ she wheezes, holding her sides, “-going to be in so much trouble.”

Wraith blinks, and then she’s laughing too.

“Shit,” her face is lit up with glee, and Alaraksis laughs even harder, “Me too.”

Wraith rises after their laughter peters out, and offers her a hand. Alaraksis slips her clawed hand into its embrace, and revels at the warmth.

“Since we’re both already screwed, how’s about we go get into a little more trouble together?”

Alaraksis grins. 

“I’m in.”


End file.
